BlackBerry App Roundup for July 17th, 2009!

Yet another Happy Friday to you all! Another great week for sure. The Tour is out and about, and the Gemini 8520 should be dropping soon. All good stuff no matter how you look at it. Getting down to business, the following titles are included in this weeks' BlackBerry App Roundup:

In Case You Missed It...

The folks at Skyfire have released a new beta to all of their private beta testers. The up-and-coming browser is no doubt being worked on diligently, and I know I'm looking forward to an official release.

Some key features recently added to the browser include the following:

New Keyboard Shortcuts: We mapped the keyboard shortcuts to be similar to the ones in the native BlackBerry browser to offer a more familiar user experience.

Switch to Skyfire: Once Skyfire is installed, you’ll see a "Switch to Skyfire" option show up in the options menu of the original Blackberry browser. We added this feature to help when users click on links in email and SMS and end up launching the native browser instead of Skyfire or when you navigate to a web site that is better viewed in Skyfire.

Text Entry in Thumbnail view: You now don’t have to zoom-in to enter text. We resolved that issue and now enter text directly in the thumbnail view of pages.

Contextual zoom with camera corners: Similar to the other Skyfire platforms, we now support contextual zoom. Thus we detect areas of interest (say articles or images) and allow you to zoom-in to areas easily by fitting the area of interest to the screen dimensions.

Faster zooming: You'll see a great improvement in your ability to zoom. Unlike Alpha 2, the page displays text at all zoom levels, without any redrawing of the screen. Less checkerboards.

Here's a fun one for all the Storm users out there. Face Lift is a fun app that allows you to change and distort images right on your Berry. Load or shoot a photo, and from there edit, twist and manipulate the image to your hearts' content. If you're looking for a fun app to help you take the edge off a hard day, Face Lift could be worth a look. It's available in our store right now for $4.99.

One of my favorite apps for a little while now, Score Mobile has been updated to include more sports news. New leagues have been added, namely the NFL, MLS, CFL (go Bombers), NCAAB, NCAAF and of course NASCAR. Add these to the already present NHL, NBA, PGA and MLB, and you've got one sports news and scoring app that delivers a lot of timely information.

The folks at Shape Services have yet again updated their very popular all-in-one messaging app for BlackBerry. The latest update has added a voice dictation feature. It allows you to speak your message, and the app will dictate and send the message along. Pretty cool. I don't expect it to work flawlessly, but still, I could see the feature coming in handy. Certainly worth a look if you use AIM, GTalk, MSN, Yahoo! Messenger and iChat (other messengers are also supported). The full version will set you back $39.95, but a 7-day free trial is available. You can check it out in our store right here.

Google recently launched their Google Voice app for BlackBerry. The app allows you to make calls, or send SMS messages from your Google Voice number. Of course, this one requires a Google Voice account in order to work, but it's well worth it. You can even use it to listen to your voicemail, or read transcripts. The app is of course free, and you can grab it from Google at http://m.google.com/voice.

New This Week

Remember the game 'Scorched Earth'? That's exactly what this game is, built for play on the BlackBerry Storm. Play as a single player vs. the computer, or play in multiplayer action. Select from one of many weapons, adjust your gun, adjust the power of your shot, and fire away at your opponent. Controls are ultra-easy, and gameplay is simple yet fun.

BBTanks is available right now for $2.99 at MobiHand. However, developer Robert Timm was good enough to give me 100 promo codes for $2 off! Simply use coupon code 'tankberry' to pick this one up for $0.99. Pick up your copy at MobiHand.

Yippidu is a news aggregator for top stories around the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and China. Turn it on, and within you'll find all of the top news stories from providers in each country.

Stories are easy to view and track, with a short snippet of text that makes it easy to preview the latest stories. There's a built-in search, related article query, handy categories, and an article archive. Plus, with the latest version (1.0.0.40) Twitter support is also available.

Have too many logins, passwords, or ID's all over the net to keep track of? If you'd like to consolidate this sensitive information and keep it secure, you may want to pick up SAFE. Use it for whatever you like... personal notes, banking information, logins, you name it... and SAFE will keep it, um... safe :) You can even take pictures and save them within your text entries. The entire database is encrypted for ultimate security... Plus, built-in protection against dictionary and guessing attacks is included by changing the final master key often.

Whereabouts Location Tracking is a simple tracking app that allows you to track places you've visited with such information as latitude, longitude, speed, course, date and more. The app uses either built-in GPS or cell tower triangulation depending on the model of Berry you carry. You can even send location data via email in CSV format.

If you'd like to try this one out I'd recommend you do so before the end of the month. Until then, it's on sale for $0.99... with a regular price of $19.99! That's a huge savings for sure! Check it out for yourself at ShopCrackBerry.com.

bbExecutor has 8 Classic assault sounds - from phasers and machine guns to bombs and explosions!On sale for $0.99
until July 31st

Cool at BlackBerry App World:

Daily Horoscope

DailyHoroscope is a top download, and for good reason. It's free, and if you're into checking your daily horoscope, this app makes it incredibly easy. Each and every day the app is updated with new horoscopes for all of the 'signs'. I installed it 3 or 4 days ago, and sure enough, there was something new to read each day. I'm not into the whole astrology/horoscope thing myself, but I'm sure many of you out there are. For the price (free), it's worth a download... If you try it, let me know what you think.

Look for Daily Horoscope in App World today.

Note: Storm users will need to disable compatibility mode to get full functionality... Just a heads up.

Freebie of the Week:

YouMail Visual Voicemail Plus is a, um.... Visual Voicemail app for your Berry... Guess you kind of figured that out huh? It's very customizable, and makes it easy to see who called from where... and you can even include a callers picture so that if and when they call, you can easily see who left you the message!

Until Next Week..

Have news on BlackBerry Apps? New BlackBerry Apps, Upgraded BlackBerry Apps, Free BlackBerry Apps... it's all good! If you have any software news tips send them in to me at softwareroundup@crackberry.com. I can't do it without your help!

I received an email form Ryan at youmail advising me that there has been a problem with it working on the storm. This is for version .96. The previous version worked fine. I had sent him a message regarding the inability to read the voicemails on the phone. He advised me that there was a script error that they were aware of and were working on. I then got another email stating they had found and fixed the error. However, he said it would take a little bit to filter out to appworld and other places. There is still no update on the web site either. So look for a update with bug fixes very soon. He advised to either go back to the old version or just wait for the update. I think I will wait.

Got the YouMail app for my curve. the app works great. only issue i had was after a term of "non-use" the youmail option "check for new messages" went dead and did not work. i had to uninstall and reinstall the entire app for it to work again. minor detail that i have learned to live with. everything else works great.

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